A simple observation:

• Most of the judgments that we make about web sites are made quickly.
• Most of the value that people get from web sites happens over time.

3 years ago I wrote: The Dangers of Judging Web Designs Superficially.

Continue Reading: Judgment happens quickly, value happens over time

How an over-focus on technology and visual design can hide the real value of social software.

In a fascinating piece on the amazing growth of the photo-sharing site Fotolog, Jason Kottke clearly articulates a growing problem in design:

“Fotolog…relative to Flickr…has changed little in the past couple of years. Fotolog has groups and message boards, but they’re not done as well as Flickr’s and there’s no tags, no APIs, no JavaScript widgets, no “embed this photo on your blog/MySpace”, and no helpful Ajax design elements, all supposedly required elements for a successful site in the Web 2.0 era. Even now, Fotolog’s feature set and design remains planted firmly in Web 1.0 territory.”

How do sites with sub-optimal visual design and technology grow so big and become so successful?

Continue Reading: How to Prevent Valueless Design in Social Web Sites

This is huge news: Digg is scrapping their top diggers list:

Kevin rose explains the decision…

Continue Reading: Digg Scraps Top Diggers List

In a Tagging Report released just yesterday, this number from the Pew Internet and American Life Project is astounding.

28% of online folks have tagged content (U.S)

At first glance this number seems extremely high. Over 1/4 of online Americans have tagged content? This is way more than the single digit %s (or lower) that have been reported previously (Dave Weinberger reports seeing 0.5%).

However, there may be more merit to the number than it may seem…

Continue Reading: Pew Study: 28% of Online Americans are Taggers

Yesterday I asked for an example of a scalable taxonomy.

Whether I meant to or not, I was assuming that the taxonomy’s cousin, the folksonomy, scales well. And most folks who wrote in or commented seemed to agree with that. So the next question is: are there any usable folksonomies out there?

Continue Reading: Is there an Example of a Usable Folksonomy?

Kevin Gamble (via Dave Weinberger):

“Is there any living, breathing example of a taxonomic approach working (scaling) to keep-up with the hyper-efficiency we see in peer-production systems? I’m being quite serious here. Can you point me to a working model?.”

Why is this an important question?

Continue Reading: Is there an Example of a Scalable Taxonomy?

In the early stages of starting a social web app, startups often wonder what group of people would make for good early adopters. What group should we focus our development and marketing efforts on?

Continue Reading: Starting a Social App? Find a niche and work outward

Two days ago, Hilary Clinton posted a question to Yahoo Answers: “Based on your own family’s experience, what do you think we should do to improve health care in America?” This is amazing on several levels. One, Clinton is actually asking the American people what they think, rather than assuming or generalizing from the party […]

Continue Reading: Hilary Clinton Uses Yahoo Answers

Amazon should make the ability to remove purchased items from recommendations much more apparent. Rashmi Sinha gave a great talk on Recommendation Systems at the UIE Web App Summit yesterday. I was like a kid in a candy store…it’s one of my favorite topics and Rashmi is a true expert on the topic. At one […]

Continue Reading: Tip for Amazon Designers: Lots of Folks Don’t Know How to Exclude Gifts from Recommendations

I just read about how four families are suing MySpace after their children were assaulted by someone they met on the site. I hate this sort of stuff because something horrible happened and there is no clear answer to who is accountable and why. There are two parts to this problem. The first part is […]

Continue Reading: MySpace sued over predator assaults